The present invention is situated in the field of communication network and more particularly relates to a method and apparatus for providing control in a communication network.
In a communication network, there is a need to control the packet flows between the elements and devices of the network. Software Defined Networks (SDN) describe a network-control architecture in which complex network functions (e.g. path calculation, topology database maintenance) previously implemented in proprietary operating systems of geographically distributed routers and switches are shifted to a centralized controller, leaving the router or switch as a simple forwarding element which can be realized on commodity hardware and which can be programmed via an open interface by the centralized controller, here centralized SDN controller. The drawback of this architecture is that tasks previously handled locally by routers and switches now require interaction between network elements and the centralized controller thereby burdening the control network with messaging not interesting for intermediate nodes.